Column: Hey IU Trustees, the optics of supporting Whitten are pretty lousy

I’ve got three words for the Indiana University Board of Trustees: Whitten Must Go!

Last month, Indiana University Bloomington faculty gathered to consider a vote of “no-confidence” in President Pamela Whitten, Provost Rahul Shrivastav, and Vice Provost Carrie Docherty. According to The Herald-Times, 93% of the assembled 948 faculty voted in favor of the no-confidence motion against Whitten. Shrivastav and Docherty fared little better.

In technical terms, it was a blowout. Of course, the Board of Trustees is not bound by the faculty vote. Indeed, in a statement, the board expressed its ongoing support of Whitten and her administration, despite the faculty’s unmistakable rebuke. All the same, I like to think the board will agree the optics are lousy. And if there’s anything university boards don’t like, it’s a bad look for their institutions.

But before you could say, “Ceasefire Now,” Whitten’s administration went from bad optics to authoritarian rule. In the wake of student activists setting up an encampment to demonstrate solidarity with the Palestinian cause, Whitten and company surreptitiously changed the rules governing the use of temporary structures on Dunn Meadow, site of historic anti-war protests in the 1960s and, more recently, rallies for Black Lives Matter.

Rather than substantively engage with representatives from the IU Divestment Coalition, who are calling on Indiana University to divest from Israel and so-called defense industries, Whitten called the state troopers in a ham-fisted effort to clear the encampments. To date, upward of 50 people have been arrested for exercising their First Amendment rights. The board cannot and must not ignore the obvious: deploying militarized police in response to student protests is no way to lead an institution of higher learning.

Sadly, like their colleagues at public and private universities across the country, IUB administrators have capitulated to the New McCarthyism that cynically conflates pro-Palestinian sentiment, solidarity, and commitment with antisemitism and anarchism. It’s not enough that the twice-impeached former president challenges democratic norms and institutions each and every day. Now we’ve got university administrators from Columbia and Emory to the University of Texas at Austin cracking down on dissent like so many tin-pot dictators.

There’s a cruel irony in all of this. University presidents never tire of speaking to the importance of leadership. But in recent months, the craven CEOs of today’s corporatized universities reveal an abject failure of leadership. Calling in militarized forces to intimidate nonviolent protesters, employing police state tactics to silence dissent, and incarcerating faculty and students is the stuff of tyrants and despots.

To state the obvious, authoritarian rule has no place on college campuses – essential sites of rigorous deliberation and debate on urgent matters of our time: from genocide and class war to systemic racism and climate catastrophe. If the IUB Board of Trustees is looking for leadership, they’ll find it on Dunn Meadow. The real campus leaders are sleeping in encampments, speaking truth to power, and laying claim to the moral and ethical high ground that presidents, provosts and other campus administrators have ceded to the forces of intolerance, indifference, and political expediency.

And if the board is genuinely interested in preserving Indiana University’s tradition of teaching and research excellence, a tradition founded on the shared values of free expression and academic freedom, listen to students of conscience. Disclose. Divest. Drop the charges.

Kevin Howley, PhD (IUB ’98) is a writer and educator based in Bloomington.